The invention relates to food processing equipment and methods. More specifically the invention is concerned with a relatively simple device and process for drawing most of the yolk out of an egg which has been removed from the shell, without destroying the appearance and integrity of the egg for cooking, for human consumption.
Hens' eggs contain animal fat and cholesterol and it has been determined that too much egg consumption can be deleterious to the cardiovascular systems of human beings. The yolk of the egg is where these potentially harmful substances lie, and therefore efforts have been made to remove some or all of the yolk from eggs, egg preparations and dried egg products. However, all known processes for yolk extraction have destroyed the appearance and integrity of the raw egg, so that a "sunny side up" or similar egg dish could not be achieved after removal of some of the yolk.
Like other eggs, the hen's egg has a membrane surrounding the yolk and separating the yolk from the white, which is transparent in the raw egg. The viscous white material seems to stick to this membrane, allowing the fresh egg to stay together, with yolk at center, when removed from the shell and transferred into a pan or onto another surface.
The applicant's own experimentation has shown that most attempts to extract part of an egg's yolk from a raw whole egg lying in a dish are not successful. The rupture of the yolk membrane normally tears open the membrane to an extent that the yolk runs and loses its shape. Until the present invention, no process or device has been known which is capable of removing most of the yolk of a hen's egg, leaving a small portion of the yolk, without destroying the separate integrities of the yolk and white and the appearance of the egg, for allowing preparation of dishes that depend on these qualities of the egg.